Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Richard H. Guerrette
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Richard K Guerrette
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relevant and efficadous in managerial decisionmaking processes.* As such, this step contains the
added benefit of setting the plausibiHty structtires of
a management ethic and serves to open a consdousness amor^ managers toward a more humanisdc
direcdon and planning of human resources. The
fourth step of this plan is to present the reformulated
corporate policy and strategy of the company aloi^
with the code of ethics and the corporate value statement as the fundamental part of the company sodalizadon and corporate educadon programming for
new employees and the continuing professional or
occupadonal educadon of senior persoimel. This
step helps to disseminate the appropriate corporate
values through the entire corporadon even to die
hasic roots of the company infrastructure where the
corporate ethos needs to be implanted. The fifth step
of this plan is to design an instrument for corporate
ethical evaluadon to measure die external record of
the company's performance in the marketplace and
the internal arrangements of the company's behavior
in the workplace. This instrument should be applied
internally to determine to what extent worker,
management and even execudve atdtudes, commitment and performance reflect company pohcy and
strategy on ethics. This step helps to insure that
corporate ethical codes and value statements will
not become framed showpieces on the walls of
execudve offices in corporate headquarters but will
be authendc symbols of what they signify, namely,
that this company behaves according to what the
code prescribes and the statement claims. Implemendng such management strategies, as suggested in
these five steps of this development plan, wotild help
to eflfecdvely set a corporate ethos in a company and
would enable its directors to reliably expect a corporate ethic from its managers.
The need for such a development plan in rebiulding a company's corporate vdue system can hardly
be contested in view of the widespread dimetisions
of corporate misbehavior. The New York Times
reports that, just in die defense industry alone, fortyfour out of the top one hundred contractors are
under investigadon. It further disdoses the extensive
propordons of such misconduct by comparing the
voltime of Pentagon sancdons in the first half of
fiscal 1984 with die same time period of 1986. Tlie
report daims that in just two years the volume
increased more than double with 417 companies
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Richard H. Guerrette
engage all execudves to cridcally evaluate the company's internal and external corporate ethical performance record without personal intimidadon or
fear of career reprisals. It is only dirough this kind of
coUegial process that a company code of ethics can
be authendcally prescribed and promulgated and a
corporate value statement, consistendy expressed
and imposed. Accordingly, cridcal thought and
planning for change can be introduced and conflict
resoludon measures can be taken to deal with any
coalidons of resistance that may ensue. In such cases,
it is important for the consultant to draw out the
seeds of contendon over controversial ethical issues
that may be latent in the execudve offices or chambers of the boardroom, lest diey grow from residual
resentments of atdtude to hostile disrupdons of
management With regard to management training
and corporate educadon, few htmian resource execudves or corporate trainers are eager to assume the
commission of introdudng ethics into curricular
programmii^, notwithstanding the exemplary training efforts of the rare execudves mendoned above.
A knowledge of management sdence and even of
philosophical ediics is ordinarily not enough to
accomplish this part of the missiotL Straight ethical
training by direct curricular input is not usually the
pracdcal course to follow in most companies. Corporate educadon insdtutes or training divisiotis are
not seminaries or divinity schools. A percepdve
management consultant in corporate ethics would
know how to indirecdy weave value themes and
unobtrusively work ethical prindples into management training either through curricular planning
with corporate trainers themselves or by designing
and dehvering interdisdphnary courses, workshops,
seminan, etc. in management sdence and corporate
educs him/herself. Finally, human resource specialists know that any accurate evaluadon instniment
must be so prepared and administered as to induce
rehable responses from the evaluated and to produce
impardal conclusions for evaluators. Inside evaluators are not usually in a posidon to secure these
kinds of evaluadve results. An outside corporate
ethical consultant can perform this service with
much greater reliabihty and objecdvity, insurii^ that
all the company's efforts to rebuild a corporate value
system will pay off.
Notes
' See, for example, the theories of Lawrence
(1981,1984) and their application to business ethics education
(Goodpaster, 1982 and Guerrette, 1986). While Goodpaster
contends that Kohlberg's stages are not always relevant to
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* This innovadve technique in corporate ethical consuldng
is based on contemporary human resource management
theory which contends that manners can shape an organizadonal reahty within their company through the strategic
planning of the company's own symbolic representadons
(See Berg, 1986).
' Process consultadon is a democratized style of consulting
pracdce in which the consultant engages the input of chents
in the consultadon process aflfording them an opportunity to
contribute to the redefinii^ and redesigning of thdr own
organizadonal realides (See Schein, 1969).
References
Beauchamp, Tom L: 1983, "Ethical Theory and Its Apphcadon to Business', Ethical Theory and Business, 2nd ed., Tom
L Beauchamp and Norman B. Bowie, eds. Prendce-Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Berg, Per-Olof: 1986, 'Symbohc Management of Human
Resources', Human Resource Management 25(4), 557579.
Berger, Peter L and Luckman, Thomas: 1967, The Social
Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowl-
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Richard H. Guerrette